Restaurant Report Card: Employees don’t know the basics

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DENVER — There were troubling discoveries at a Thai restaurant during health inspections.

I Sushi

The Denver restaurant failed our report card with 15 critical violations in its July and January surprise inspections. The violations include:

Employees could not answer questions about handing washing, sanitizing and temperature holding
Raw fish, crab and octopus were thrown out because they were held at the wrong temperature
No soap at the hand sink

We stopped by when the restaurant failed to return our calls and emails.

Erika Gonzalez: “I was hoping to speak to someone about your recent health inspections.”

Employee: “We are doing pretty much everything, there’s only one or two things.”

Erika Gonzalez: “There were several violations so I want to make sure you are aware there were several things.”

Employee: “Yes that’s fine. Right now, we fix everything.”

The restaurant is located at 801 Santa Fe Drive.

New BARRY’S

The Denver restaurant scored an “F” for 10 critical violations in its July inspection. The critical mistakes include:

Two fish fillets covered with mold
A bottle of liquor contained flies
Sausage was covered by an unidentified liquid and ice
Employee dipped pieces of bread in raw eggs then touched clean equipment

New Barry’s sent a statement that said:

“We understand as a business all the requirements from the Health Department has to be 100% implemented and for that reason we are doing our best working together with the Health Department to address and fix the problems ASAP. For the last couple visits, as we received the reports from the Health Department we informed our staff that they need to understand that these are serious issues and that they need to begin working on immediately. The last visit we had a violation that the dishwashing machine wasn’t sanitizing, we had the company who provides the service on our machine come out and they did a report that the machine has always been sanitizing but at the end of the machine was getting diluted with water and we are including a statement from the company that this isn’t an issue and is in fact sanitizing all dishes at all times. All managers have been informed what to look for and will monitor on every shift to ensure that we are up to standards.”

The family restaurant is at West Jewell Avenue and South Federal Boulevard.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

The Chocolate Factory earned the “A” for no critical violations in its last two routine inspections.

Owner Tabatha Carcasson said their cleaning routine makes it possible for them to score an “A.”

”We just always have our store clean. It’s for our customers. We want people to walk up and feel like they know they are getting food from a great establishment.”

The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is in the Aurora Mall Town Center.

How restaurants appear on our Report Card

Restaurant Report Card airs on FOX31 News at 9 p.m. each Friday and features health inspections in the city and county of Denver, Jefferson County, Weld County and restaurants under the jurisdiction of the Tri-County Health Department. The Tri-County Health Department includes Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties.

An inspection is a “snapshot” of what is happening during the day and time of the inspection. On any given day, a restaurant could have more or fewer violations than noted in an inspection. Also, at the time of an inspection, violations are recorded and can be corrected prior to the inspector leaving the restaurant. If violations are not corrected, a follow-up inspection is scheduled.

The criteria FOX31 Denver uses to give a restaurant a failing grade includes the evaluation of two unannounced inspections by county health inspectors. A failing restaurant must have five critical violations on their most recent regular inspection and five critical violations on the previous regular inspection. Health inspectors may conduct critical or follow-up inspections, due to the number of critical violations found during a regular inspection. Those inspections may also be considered for our reports. We recognize restaurants with two perfect regular inspections in a row by awarding them an A.